In the field of intensive critical care, the ability of care personnel to respond to crises can be hampered if the caretaker is required to trace intravenous tubes. For example, it is quite common for a cardiac critical care patient to have a multiple lumen catheter inserted through a central vein into the heart and on into the pulmonary artery, where each lumen of the catheter is guided into different areas of the heart for the purposes of hemodynamic monitoring. One commonly used catheter employs four lumens, two of those lumens adapted to allow blood and fluids to flow in and out of the patient, and the other two lumens adapted to operate internal diagnostic devices such as a thermistor and occluding balloon for determining pulmonary wedge pressure. Of the two lines which transmit fluids, one lumen is adapted to provide a means for measuring pulmonary artery distal pressure and the other lumen is adapted to measure central venous pressure.
These multiple lumen catheters are commonly attached to a stop cock valve assembly, where the caretaker manipulates the positions of the stop cock valves in order to direct the flow of fluids. For example, configuring these valves so that a fluid path is provided between the lumen inserted in the central vein and the pressure bag allows for the caretaker to measure central venous pressure. Similarly, arranging the valves so that a path is provided between the pulmonary artery and the pressure bag allows for distal pressure to be measured. Finally, the valves can be arranged so that a fluid path is provided between injecting ports and the various blood fluid lines for the purposes of infusing medication.
Because caretakers are often required to obtain pressure readings and infuse medications during a crisis situation, it is important that the caretaker be able to rapidly identify the location of the various intravenous lines and establish the proper fluid communication paths through the stop cock valve assembly. Unfortunately, most caretakers are required to manually construct these monitoring bridges by assembling a number of individual stop cock valves into a bridge assembly. This poses two problems. The first problem is that each caretaker may choose to use a different configuration of valves to achieve the same fluid routing bridge. As a result, caretakers are often confronted with configurations assembled by a different caretaker and which are unfamiliar to them. This leads to the second problem, which is an increase in the time it takes the caretaker to respond to a crisis situation, since the caretaker must first decipher the configuration of the stop cock valve bridge assembly before being able to determine the proper combination of valve positions necessary to achieve the desired fluid flow path. Thus, confronting a caretaker with an ad hoc configuration of stop cock valves increases the risk that erroneous pressure readings may be taken or that injections may be infused into the wrong lines. It would therefore be advantageous to provide for a catheter monitor bridge where the configuration of the lumens and the valves would be easy to identify, and the manner in which the stop cock valves need to be manipulated in order to route the fluids for the various pressure readings and infusions would be readily apparent to a caretaker. In this way, caretakers would be better able to respond to a crisis situation promptly without risking misidentification of the bridge components.